BTW, CleVR is really VERY simple to use and is helped if your camera has the panorama shot setting as mine does. If not, just remember to keep the photos at the same level and overlap at least 1/4

Joe Dale has this on his blog and I think it’s a great step forward - thanks again Joe

Mofuse is free and easy to use

Joe says

Just imagine doing the same for your departmental MFL blog where you could encourage your pupils to access written and audio material on their mobiles outside of the classroom in their own time. What a great idea!

Just use your mobile to go online and add in the website address - note no www et voila! Blog feeds on your mobile http://edublogstutorials.mofuse.mobi/

There’s also a badge in the sidebar with the address linked to it

I have the BBC news sent directly to my blog and it is updates automatically - so no work for me.

There should be a plugin called Aggr which makes this task really easy and it seems to have now disappeared - hence the reason my feed was not working.

To work around this, you need to use a third party (free) site called Pageflakes.

• sign up for Pageflakes
• if you are very visual, you can use this to read all your feeds
• you can import these feeds from another reader if you want to try and see how it looks
• there’s a menu button (literally a button)
• in there you will see on the LHS  ‘add RSS feed’
• click on this and ad the rss feed for the site you want to use
• you can choose to import all your feeds
• add your opml file where is asks
• you get this file by clicking the ‘export’ option in your reader
• in google, it says ‘manage my subscriptions’
• this will bring all your feeds in for you to see and use
• choose the feed you want to add to your blog
• click on the email logout the top of the feed box
• choose ‘get flake’
• copy the code
• note the page will need to be set to public in order to work
• paste the code into a post using the ‘code’ tab or
• paste it into a sidebar widget box
• voila

check out my BBC news feed

The site is mystudiyo and is free to use

Joe had a French quiz that looked pretty good and you are able to grab the code and add these to your own blogs, so you do not need to create them all from scratch - you can share

There’s also a facility to have a quiz where users can ad in their own questions - moderated, of course, so you can get your class to contribute as well as consume.

Mysudiyo.com is a great free site that really brings quizzes to Edublogs. You can add pictures, video and up to 4 answers for each question. The potential is great

I have made up a quick demo just to see how this works and embeds

CleVR is a UK based company and I think they’re well worth a mention.

Uses:

• VR tour of the classroom, playground etc
• Field trips
• insides of buildings

do you have any great ideas?

Oh yes, and it can be embedded in a post, which is why I think it’s so cool - thanks to Joe Dale for that link

See how it’s done CleVR Stitcher tutorial screencast

A tag cloud takes a look at the whole of your site and then prioritises the most used words  by size.  This is fully customisable to suit your design ideas but is a good way to show students what’s of top interest on your site at the moment

It’s all free and provided by ZoomClouds 

Just sign up and follow the very simple instructions.  My tag cloud is the default one so I didn’t need to change anything

There’s an embed code which is simple to use

authorSTREAM lets you upload Powerpoints, rate them, email them, comment on them and embed the Flash player in blogs and websites.

SlideShare is similar, while Scribd supports the widest range of formats. ZohoShow is another, while the ThinkFree Office suite also offers embedding of documents.

It also seems to have a slightly bigger player. I also notice that my Slideshare instructions have reverted to the original as the new, quick method does not seem to work anymore - see the Powerpoint category for more information

If you want to see more on video, click the ‘Video’ link in my categories on the right sidebar.

Firefox Add-ons

• the data add on is an unlimited and not a fair use as I had been advised, so it can be used 24/7 on a laptop or phone
• there is a 200Mb limit on all browsing on a laptop or phone, so not unlimited
• the data is all chargeable via laptop but free on phone
• this service is not available via laptop

So, all clear then So currently, I shall be trying it out and seeing if there is a charge or not when I get my bill - I have used this a little and this month’s bill shows nothing. Check out these videos - thanks to Joe Dale for these - they’re about using Fring - free software instead of Skype Using Fring 1 Using Fring 2

1. make sure you have a google account - free
2. go to google docs and start a new document - like Word
3. write your information for your post
4. save the file - not sure if you really have to do this, but it makes sense
5. click on the ’share’ button on the rhs menus
6. click ‘publish as web page’
7. click ‘change your blog site settings’
8. choose ‘my own server/custom’
9. API is moveable type API
10. URL - put in your address where is says ‘Your site/Path’
11. mine looks like this http://miketemple123.edublogs.org/TO/xmlrpc.php - ie set up for a Wordpress API
12. Under existing blog settings, put in your edublogs username and password
13. Add in your blog title
14. Tick ‘include document title
15. click OK
16. Now when you’ve finished your post, click ’share’ and then ‘publish as a web page’ then publish to blog
17. let me know what you think of this - applications please

Why would this be useful - perhaps getting the students to post via Google docs could work.

This could be a great way to get your students to do a writeup for your class blog. Just have a class login for Google docs and have them all log in and create then save their posts in Google docs. Then, I think it would be advisable for you to publish them using the ’share’ menu, without lettinng the students in on this function. This way, you can do multiple and collaborative writeups - any other ideas out there?

Unable to get pictures in at the right size at the moment via Google docs, otherwise this seems to work well - I think this is a Safari-specific issue

Advantages

• easier to make multiple posts
• spellchecking built in
• can add in tables
• headers and footers
• strikeout, superscript and subscript
• collaborative aspect to posts
• ability to indent
• highlighting - this doesn’t seem to show up in Edublogs

cell1	cell2
cell3	cell4

• editing is much much quicker
• you can probably upload a .doc file to Google docs and then edit it quickly before posting

Disadvantage

• at the moment, no way to categorise or tag posts

If anyone would like an invite to help look into this and set up some instructions, please let me know

I have uploaded one to test this out - Bip.tv automatically converts them all to flash and then they can be embedded using their player, straight into your post, just brilliant - with unlimited upload space. It just gets better and better

You can also add this to iTunes so folks can easily subscribe to your channel by clicking on the iTunes Dashboard Pane videos will need to be in the QuickTime format to work with iTunes, so the site says

So once again, a complete set of ticks in the box for Blip.tv

BTW, I have changed the player size to 450 x 355 and this seems to work great - do this by just editing the numbers after you have pasted in the code

There are new ‘dongles’ coming onto the market that offer 1gb of surfing for about £10 a month - this equates to only about 1 hour a day. This is hardly a great deal and is really only going to be used by those who MUST have access for business etc.

Well, hang on - I’ve been looking at a new mobile phone as mine is up for renewal. It’s a choice between the iPhone and what? O2 currently have the Nokia N95 8Gb phone - top of the range for around £35 a month on an 18 month contract - dig in more

This includes 600 minutes calls and 1000 texts AND you can take out a FREE, unlimited (fair use) data add-on.

before reading the following, please check out Mobile internet connection UK update

This allows the N95 to be used as a mobile internet 3G adapter*, giving you access to the internet wherever you go and take your laptop with you*. It connects using bluetooth, so no cables needed. You can, of course, use the data add-on to access the internet on your phone too via 3G. It also has satnav built-in. If you’re in a wi-fi hot-spot, you can also use your phone wirelessly too. So, if like me, you’ve not yet got to grips with mobile hand-held internet, here’s a possibility.

You can also download Skype mobile (via Fring) and call folks all over the world for free* (Skype - to Skype) direct from your mobile - now that’s interesting

Stuff changes all the time, but I thought it was worth mentioning for those who are frustrated not having access everywhere - like me! It means I won’t have to spend an extra £10 - 15 a month or £1 a day charge* to connect when I visit my parents and introduce my dad to the fun of making a VoiceThread story to go with some of his great photos

The transfer speed seems to be about 250 Kbps, so OK for most things

Note - please check all this information for yourself before trying this - however O2 offer 14 day trial if it doesn’t work out right for you* - update this is not available from the shops - if you sign up, it’s all yours - once again, contradictory info from the O2 people

The great stuff goes all the way to 100, so don’t ignore the little ones like Toondoo

1. sign up for a Flickr account
2. upload some photos
3. go to the badge page - not sure where the link is at this moment
4. choose the badge shape
5. select the other options offered
6. copy the code in the box
7. open up an Edublogs post in edit mode
8. Write in any text you wish to have,
9. click on the code tab at the top
10. put the cursor where you want the badge to appear
11. paste in the code
12. Publish
13. enjoy

Note:  this was not as simple as it looks - I ended up with lots of unwanted code in the post and had to delete it manually - anyone any ideas what I’m doing wrong?

Also, I’m unable to find the link on the Flickr page which leads to me finding the embed code - dohh - I’m not feeling very bright with this embed stuff - I’m hoping Patricia is reading this and can give me the right way to do it - again!

Once again any help will be welcome

It is straight forward to do

1. sign up for a free Scribd account
2. upload a document
3. find the ‘embed’ box
4. copy the code
5. open up a post in edit mode
6. add any text that you wish - descriptions etc
7. click the code tab at the top
8. place your cursor where you want your document to show up
9. click paste
10. click publish
11. enjoy
    

1.  go to your online picasa web albums
2. check the  settings in Google
3. change this to English (US)
4. to embed your slideshow
5. click on embed slideshow
6. copy the code in the box
7.  open up your post in Edublogs in edit mode
8. add any text you would like to add- eg a description
9. click on the code tab at the top of the post
10. select where you would like the show to begin
11. paste in the code
12. change the height to 355 and the width to 450
13. click publish
14. enjoy

I thought it might be fun to add a collaborative mindmap so I can update this post really easily.  I have invited Patricia to collaborate on this, so I see she’s already added some new bits

1      GCast

2     TalkShoe 

Both of these fulfil the criteria I set when starting my research into podcasting for educators

• allows uploading of MP3 files
• allows downloading of MP3 files
• has unlimited free hosting
• allows a streamed listening via widget player
• this player can be embedded in an Edublogs sidebar (both of mine are there - take a listen)
• on clicking the link within the player, a user can then subscribe to your podcast via iTunes
• this type of recording can be imported to InnerTOOB to produce annotated podcasts

TalkShoe also has the facility for live broadcast

I hope this helps some of you who have found getting started in Podcasting a bit of a trial

After lengthy discussions and weighing up of the pros and cons we’ve decided to allow javascript, iframes and object code onto Edublogs.

This means that you can now just copy and paste pretty much most ‘embedding’ code you can pick up around the web directly into your Edublog.

For posts and pages just click on the ‘Code’ tab and paste the code in there. For sidebar widgets just create as many Text Boxes as you need (under Presentation > Widgets) and copy and paste the code into them.

For example, say you wanted to play a widget game on your blog… simply go there, click on ‘Get Widget’, copy the code and paste it in your ‘Code tab and you’ll get theembedded widget right there in your blog’s sidebar or post

You can also use iframes to embed things like Calendars, put CoComment and Ligit in your sidebar or add live chat and extra Twitter options.

eg Google calendar

Also the GCast player now also works - brilliant news for podcasters - see it in my sidebar

However - Side note: As a result the Widgetbox, Box.net and Video Widgets will be replaced by this approach - so please recreate any widgets you currently have in Text Box form before we remove these widgets (next week).

It’s detailed and has all that you will need to get up and running with Edublogging - thanks Gail

The index looks like this, so anything here you want to find out about - check it out

Getting Started ……………………………………………………………………3
Viewing Your Blog………………………………………………………………..5
Changing Your Password……………………………………………………..6
Changing Other Information in the Users Panel ………………….6
Creating a Post or Page ……………………………………………………….7
Editing a Post ………………………………………………………………………7
Creating Pages……………………………………………………………………..8
Adding Hyperlinks to a Post (or Page) …………………………………9
Adding Anchor Links……………………………………………………………9
Creating Categories………………………………………………………………10
Assigning Categories ……………………………………………………………10
Adding Tags to a Post …………………………………………………………..11
Adding Links to Your Blog Roll……………………………………………..12
Adding Your Blog Roll to the Sidebar…………………………………….12
Changing the Presentation (Theme)………………………………………12
Adding Images or Documents to Your Blog …………………………..14
Formatting Images ……………………………………………………………….15
Changing Your Blog’s Tagline ………………………………………………..15
Monitoring Your Blog …………………………………………………………….16
Moderating Comments…………………………………………………………..17
Approving Comments …………………………………………………………..17
Editing Comments………………………………………………………………….17
Adding Edublog Community Users ………………………………………..18
Limiting Comments to Edublog Community Members ………….19
Ready for Advanced Edublogs Tutorials? ……………………………..19

They have chosen this site, along with another 6 as the ClustrMap site of the month 

Do also check out the rest of their blog  as they have lots of tips and hints

I do think that they are the ones deserving of the accolades for not only producing a great add on for us, but also taking the time to make it sooooo easy to add one to your own Edublog site - see ClustrMaps update

Hurrah for the ClustrMaps team

This is a new function which allows you as an Edublogs user to create new blogs for others to use.

Key point is that you can add yourself as an administrator to assist them with some of the fiddly setting up and theme selection. All this can be managed from your own dashboard.

You can also choose to have them set up as author or contributor, so their posts are moderated first, before going live.

These are available free of charge in batches of 15, but you can have more if you require - if you need more, just fill in the first 15 on the blog form, process it and repeat

Dead easy

Many thanks to all of the 10,000 of you who have dropped in and taken a look

Well done all those of you who have used this and other sites to get your Edublogs up and running, as well as those who have helped me with tech tips and checking my sometimes faulty or ambiguously written advice

Keep on blogging

get your vodpod" width="501" height="428" wmode="transparent" /]

1. Go into site administration
2. choose ‘presentation’ then ‘widgets’
3. in the selection box at the bottom, chose the ClustrMaps widget
4. Add a title
5. Click the ‘agree’ box
6. your blog address should already be in there
7. click ’save’ *
8. voila, you have a clustrmap in your sidebar.

Just as an extra

*If this is the first time you have used widgets, be aware that adding the first widget means all the others present in your theme will disappear from both sidebars (if you have 2). So to fix this, make sure you add them all from the selection box before saving

Key one is meta as this allows you to log in again - if you don’t have this, you end up being locked out of your own blog

I like the idea of having a customised headers as this allows easy change of the look without losing functionality.

So here’s the latest

Called SeaShore 1.0 by Sadish Bala

Thanks for developing this for us to use - I think it’s great

let me know what it looks like from out there

Quite simply, as a free user, you can add one forum to your site - probably best in a page as it will then be available on the front of your blog - check out mine in the header menus

Click on picture below to go to article

All the requirements are there which make the platform a very useable one. In addition to this, I finally managed to get round to checking if an uploaded Talkshoe podcast or recording could be put into InnerTOOB and annotated.

Well, it seems that works as well. So it’s an all singing-and-dancing podcast service with all the requirements I had asked for.

Check out the InnerTOOB annotated podcast here

Using Talkshoe as a broadcasting tool is fine most of the time. I have used Shoephone, which is their VOIP ( like Skype) and for most a time it performs very well. However, when it does fail, you have no way of knowing that this is happening unless somebody who is listening feeds back to you. Even if they did this, you are unable to alter anything as I am told this is due to bandwidth issues.

Dave Nelsen (founder) says

“ShoePhone, like any VoIP service, can be disrupted by internet bandwidth or packet delay variance problems (AKA latency). This is not under your control or ours — just one of the hazards of sending delay-sensitive voice packets across the internet. As such, we recommend to hosts that they use a regular (land-line) phone if possible. ShoePhone is more for callers who can be muted if they are having audio quality problems.”

In addition to this, uses are advised to shut down any other VOIP software they may have running as this can cause potential conflicts. The problem I have with this for education is that users in Europe would have to pay international rates in order to join in a conference - if they wish to guarantee call quality.

However, if you consider Talkshoe as a Podcasting service and forget the broadcast part for the moment, I think it is the package that Edublogs users have been looking for for sometime.

here are some of the advantages:

• allows uploading of MP3 files
• allows downloading of MP3 files
• has unlimited hosting
• allows a streamed listening via widget player
• this player can be embedded in an Edublogs sidebar
• on clicking the title within the player, a user can then subscribe to your podcast via iTunes
• can be imported to InnerTOOB to produce annotated podcasts

I think for most people, this is the complete suite of requirements for podcasting and I am recommending this to the people who require all of these tools.

I had reviewed a number of other sites, and these include:

GCast

InnerTOOB

Gabcast

Voicethread

Edublogs

and although all of them are brilliant and free, each one has at least one restriction that seems to have frustrated a number of Edublogs users in the past.

So, there are now no excuses - podcasting within Edublogs has now come of age

I hope this information helps some of you move forward and start podcasting for yourself and with your children

Talkcast No 2

Thanks to those who joined in today from Florida and Ireland

All didn’t go smoothly, but it’s a bit of a learning curve.  I think I clicked the mouse when I shouldn’t have and broke my end of the conversation.  Pat joining in made my voice go ‘gargly’ for no reason - so it was a bit of fun in the end

Trying to monitor and queue conversations when you can’t hear what folks are saying is hilariously difficult to do.

I have checked the recording on the Talkshoe site - was up in about 10 minutes
    Edublogs Tutorials Talkcast

and fortunately I haven’t added in any mumblings about the software or my ineptitude - phew!

Check if this time works for you

We will be discussing Edublogs and web 2.0 tools

Please feel free to email me with more specific things you would like to discuss and I’ll add them to this post

Many thanks to the patience of Patricia Donaghy from Ireland who joined me and helped iron out some of the operational issues, as we were both newcomers

This Talkcast is now available on the TalkShoe site - search for 12223 and it will be on your screen to listen to or to download. Please be aware that the forst couple of minutes of the recording sound like I’m gargling with water. It is also available on iTunes under Edublogs Tutorials Talkcast or the fresh (ungargling) edited version on Edublogs Tutorials GCast with in and outros

Have a look at Patricia’s post Join in Interactive Discussions with TalkShoe

In order to get the widget player thingy in your sidebar:

1. Log in to your TalkShoe account
2. at the bottom of your player, there’s a ‘get & share’ button
3. click on this and then choose ‘embed’
4. click the ‘copy’ button to get the code
5. Log into Edublogs dashboard
6. Click on “Presentation” in the main navigation bar.
7. Click on “Widgets” in the sub-navigation bar.
8. Get yourself a “Text” widget - scroll down to the “Text Widgets”section and give yourself a new widget by increasing the number in the drop down box by one.
9. Drag your new widget (They’re alphabetical) to the sidebar where you’d like it to appear.
10. Click on the edit button for your new widget (On the right side).
11. Paste in the code
12. hit save
13. take a look at your new TalkShoe player - voila

Following last week’s effort, I shall be trying again tomorrow evening at 8pm GMT - that’s 3pm EST and I think 12:00 PST

Feel free to join me - if I get it all right this time

I managed to get a pre-recorded intro in, but with poor quality,  and the live talk and what could have been some discussion seemed not to be functioning.  I have a suspicion that at some point, my mic was muted out and I’d missed it as I was reading from a set of notes.

Apologies to anyone who was listening to the sound of silence, whilst I was chatting away happily to myself - still, some lessons learned

Pdonaghy,  Clickspice – alias Alec Dorling who were there but  I couldn’t get to them.  I did get a message, but by the time I’d seen it, pd had gone.  Sorry for being a poor host

Ho hum.  Not to worry - Ill be having another go next week at the same time - I’ll keep you posted - or let me know if you are planning to have a go and you can have a sympathetic ear

Happy new year to you all and welcome to this next adventure.

I came across Talkshoe some time back but I was jarred into action when Steve Hargadon invited me and others to join him in a talkcast. This is quite simple an open broadcast, like internet radio, but with the opportunity for others to simply listen, or to take a step in and contribute. The latter requires that you have a Talkshoe account but it is all free as usual.

How to talk

You can join in by text chat or by audio via Skype, VOIP or dial in on your phone or cell. Having listened in on Steve’s, it would appear that there were lots of difficulties with feedback and mic levels.

I used Talkshoe’s own internet phone system Shoephone and it worked without doing anything at all - very easy and free, like Skype.

I always use a headset microphone to speak into and I leave the earpiece lead out of my PC and have the sound come through the speakers

Oh yes. Talkshoe also allows you to record and publish your discussion and to have it listed in iTunes as a podcast so archiving a discussion couldn’t be easier

How could this apply to the classroom?

Collaborative projects

Visiting speakers shared out with other schools

Discussion on visits that more than one school/class have taken part in

As usual, I am stepping well outside my comfort zone and technical abilities to investigate the uses of this tool. If you would like to join me on Saturday, please do

Remember you can

a) lurk

b) text chat

c) be brave and join me

in the case of all of you being A’s, I will just talk about the technology and my recent journey. If you would like to join in, we’ll have a chat about Edublogs and the innovative ways you are using it.

How It Works

Well despite my best efforts, Saturday’s talkcast was a bit of a failure. I did rehersals and they went fine but the live event was dismal. I managed to get a pre-recorded intro in, but with poor quality, and the live talk and what could have been some discussion seemed not to be functioning. I have a suspicion that at some point, my mic was muted out and I’d missed it as I was reading from a set of notes.

Apologies to

Pdonaghy, Clickspice – alias Alec Dorling who were there but I couldn’t get to them. I did get a message, but by the time I’d seen it, pd had gone. Sorry for being a poor host

Ho hum. Not to worry - Ill be having another go next week at the same time - I’ll keep you posted

I did say I would contact GCast support and see what they could do about their embedded player and the url link for their files not ending in .mp3 (a requirement for using InnerTOOB)

I asked:

I’m doing some research around Podcasting, GCast and InnerTOOB and trying to synthesise a package for digital storytelling

I think GCast is turning out to be a great package for what I want to do

There are a few questions I would like some help with, if at all possible

1 Is there likely to be any development work on a widget that allows Edublogs.org users to embed your excellent player, as the current script or code doesn’t work?

2 In order to use the InnerTOOB.com annotation facility (which is important for educators), I need to have a link for my uploaded file ending in .mp3 or .flv. I have looked at your links on the uploaded files in my GCast channel, but they are not in this format – I’d love to be able to link this in – any help here would be greatly appreciated – are your uploaded files .mp3s

3 Does an uploaded GCast channel automatically get submitted to iTunes, or do I have to do that independently using Feedburner or similar

This is what they had to say

Jennifer Carafelli

Thank you for contacting GarageBand Support. Our support team is not familiar with the Edublogs platform, so we are not exactly sure what the problem is. If you can describe in more detail what’s happening we will do our best to help out.

Thank you for contacting GarageBand Support. I sent you an email about edublogs for more information as we are not familiar with it. Unfortunately we don’t have hosting the supply .mp3 links in URLs. All files uploaded are MP3’s but we just don’t have a direct link URL

I have sent lots of info including links etc but will continue to have a dialogue with them

I’ll let you know what happens

I only had one slight problem in production -I forgot to add my intro music at the beginning. There’s probably a simple way to do it, but I didn’t find it.

+ points

1. very easy to use
2. allows contribution by voice, video or saved recording
3. allows feedback and comments - moderated by the creator (this thread’s moderated)
4. embeds into Edublogs posts

-ve points

1. does not integrate with iTunes
2. allows students to browse other Voicethreads by other people - I do not know if this is moderated

I would highly recommend having a go at this - you might like to  comment on my production or just saying ‘hello’ - in fact, I’d really like to see what it looks like to have a collaborative podcast and see if this would work in the classroom. My suspicion is that it would be brilliant

GCast is a hosting site and you can add your mp3s there and simply add a link on your post. when you are redirected, there are lots of podcast subscription services you can use, including iTunes, just with the click of a button.

You can also have this added to your homepage in Google, Yahoo, MSN as well as subscribing by email.

Option 1: <